It drummed, then paused, it reared,—then ran, And fled at last to living man,

As shipwreck seeks the shore.

Behind the brake, with straining nerve,
Couched, on the ground, lay the reserve,-
Like Scots at Waterloo;

It bounded o'er that breathing clay,
And nestled where a soldier lay,-
Whose heart was panting too;

Beneath his arm it shelter took,
And on him gazed with timid look,
As past the bullets flew.

Up! up! reserve!-the foe is beat!-
See, where he flies in full retreat !
The bloody battle's won;

And as the soldier marched along,
The little trembler joined the throng,
In doubt which way to run;

But as the dreadful din of war

Was faint, and fainter heard afar,

Its friendship then was done!

With glee it crossed the bloody plain,
And, slyly, crept amongst the grain,
And left its former friends.

Thus, here we see, when danger blows,
That friends are made of deadly foes
When common peril pends-
Alas! too many make a shield,
Like this poor trembler of the field,
Until their terror ends.

But when the sun of Success shines,
And poverty no longer pines,

Their former friends despise ;
Or, thankless, leave them to their fate,
And even grin with smothered hate,
Because they know their rise.
Poor, timid puss, enjoy thy brake,—
But, never leave a friendly flake

For man, if thou art wise!

302 STRAY LINES ON THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH.

But, pussey! thou art not alone
Ungrateful for a kindness shown,
And prone to slip away;

For, lordly man, his turn once served,
Will flit as slyly unobserved,

And leave his former stay;
Whenever poverty or danger's seen,
He'll flit like sunbeams o'er the green,

And vanish with the day!

The idea of this hurriedly-written poem was taken from reading an incident in connection with the civil war which raged in the then divided Continent of America. At the battle of Malvern Hill, a rabbit had taken shelter in a small clump of bushes, just betwixt the opposing armies. The shots and noise roused the creature. It left its hiding-place, ran hither and thither, stood on its hind legs, and gazed wistfully around. At last, it ran right across to where the reserve lay-like Wellington's reserve at Waterloo-to allow the bullets to whistle over them. It nestled under the arm of a soldier, and lay until the army was again on the march, and followed the soldier until the coast was clear, then slipped quietly away to its former haunts.

STRAY LINES ON THE TRAGEDY OF

"OUT!

MACBETH.

UT! damned spot, out!" Remorse to Murder cries,
And phantom Banquos sear the Assassin's eyes.
"Blood boltered" to the nails are Treason's hands,
Manured with blood are fell Ambition's lands.
Thus felt proud Rome's imperial-minded slave,
Who wept to think one world should hold his grave,-
Wept like a schoolboy till his toy was gained,
But flung it from him when 'twas once attained;
Ambition's lust not only makes, but mars,

As burning wounds doth leave the broadest scars.
Thus felt Macbeth,-Ambition's finger-post,
Which warns a world through a Comrade's ghost ;-
Great is the lesson which wise Shakespeare gave,
To make Ambition dig its own deep grave.
Behold! the trueness of yon witchcraft spell,
Which made Success, first lead the way to Hell!
The loyal subject-and the soldier brave
Transformed into a "rump-fed ronyon's" slave!--

STRAY LINES ON THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH. 303

Successes hurried on,—and dimmed his sight,
As eyes become oppressed by too much light.
"All hail Macbeth," the juggling witches cry,
Then held up "Cawdor" to Ambition's eye;
Once Cawdor gained-the crown was spied by Hope,
Through red Ambition's crimson telescope;
Unhinged by Sin there sprang a serpent strife,-
Like Adam, found a temptress in his wife;
She makes the hazy hope, by art, seem clear,
And throws her spirit o'er his embryo fear;
Engraves with subtlety his bloody plan,
And made, like Faust, a demon!-of a man.
Hers was the soul that lit his darkling gloom,

And hers the hand that daubed the sleeping groom ;-
Hers too that snatched the dagger from his grasp,
And smearing, smiled to see her victim gasp.
Great is the falling when a woman falls,
She frightens Pity, and Beneficence appals,-
Well did she know her husband fain would win,
But lacked the coward's courage to begin.
'Tis done, hark! with what a palsied tread,
He staggers from the murdered Duncan's bed.
'Tis done!-the deed, upheld by Hell, till then,
Dares him to say
"God bless us," or to breathe "Amen!"
Within his throat they stuck,-he could not speak,-
No juggling fiends that mental spell could break;
'Tis done! Remorse like lightning sped before,
And to his spirit thundered " Sleep no more!".
With Duncan's murder, did he murder Sleep,—
"The Great Restorer" vanished from his keep.
As poisoned chalices return again,

And settle on the hand that dealt the pain;
So, though the "time be mocked with fairest show,"
And falsehood hide the venom that's below,
Eternal daggers haunt the murderer's brain,
And gouts of blood their brightest edges stain ;-
Not all Arabia's perfumes e'er can scent
The hand that once on wilful murder leant,-
Nor Angel, "minister to a mind diseased,"
When fell Remorse has on its victim seized,
Nor"

raze the written troubles of the brain,"
When black Despair comes thundering in her train.

Conscience, aroused, at last exerts her power,
Which only slept away a prosperous hour,
Fearful her waking-to forgotten sins,-
Sleepless the torture when she once begins.
"Out! damned spot, out!" Alas! in vain is said,-
The stain remains, although the action's dead,
A mental stain-which e'en the God of Heaven
In justice writes-on earth-"the Unforgiven!"

THE HEAP OF HUMAN SKULLS.

On seeing a heap of human bones, chiefly skulls, thrown out of a hole in a churchyard. This hole was used as a sort of storeroom, so to speak, for holding all the "unripe" bones and tissues, turned up in digging the graves, before a proper register was kept by the sextons. There was hair and even portions of flesh sticking on some of the skulls, one, evidently a female, had the remnant of a yellow silk handkerchief wrapped around it; the sexton informed me that he knew the lady. This abominable system was carried on quite unknown to the public.

"Call it a soldier's cup,

Our Duchess I know, will pledge us though the cup
Was once her father's head, which, as a trophy,
We'll keep till death."-The Duke, “Middleton's Witch."

How the

Hamlet. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. knave jowls it to the ground as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches: one that would circumvent God, might it not?"

Horatio.- "It might, my lord."

Ham."Or of a courtier: which could say, 'Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou good lord? This might be my lord Such-a-one, that praised my lord Such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it: might it not?"

Hor.-"Ay, my lord."

Ham.-"Why, e'en so: and now my lady worms: chapless and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see 't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with them? mine ache to think on 't." "There's another;

why may not that be the skull of a lawyer: where be his quiddits now, his quillits, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel and will not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! this fellow might be in 's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fiues, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box: and must the inheritor himself have no more? ha?"

1st Clo." Here's a skull now hath lain i' the earth three-and-twenty years." Ham.- "Whose was it?"

1st Clo.-"A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! he poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once, this same skull, sir, was Yorick's, the King's jester." Ham.-"This? Alas, poor Yorick !-I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that."

THAT! have you come again-once more to grin,

WHAT

With fleshless gums, upon this world of sin?
As if you have not had your mete of pain,
And fain would wag your tongue in grief again.
What would your nearest kith and kin now think,
Who lately wept upon your false grave's brink?
To see you here again with lipless jaws,
As if deriding man's poor selfish laws,-
Erecting tombs,1 and shedding useless tears
Upon the spot they fondly deem their biers?
Chiselling types and cutting mimic bust,
To feed the Maw of Time, to end in dust,
When not one particle of the lettered praise
Is left, by Time's inexorable ways.
What would they think to see you here again,
The jest of lewd, or awe of timid men?
Your grey hairs sticking to the clammy skin,
While curious meddlers poke and pry within--
To see how loam could fill the place of eyes.
And soul-fed brains become a worm's prize?
As steel unpainted is the prey of rust,
"Doomed to decay, and then expire in dust."-
Alas! might this not lower man's worldly pride,
To see a hundred skulls grin side by side?—
Hurled too, in one,-disgusting-loathsome heap,
The rich and poor in one eternal sleep!—

No doubt it is a natural and sacred feeling to erect tombstones over the dead, but really it is of little importance, for the waves of a few generations soon sweep them away. Wordsworth truly says, speaking of the dead shepherd:— An unelaborate stone

May cover him, and by its help, perchance,

A century shall hear his name pronounced,

With images attendant on the sound,

Then shall the slowly gathering twilight close

In utter night, and of his corse remain

No cognizable vestiges, no more

Than of this breath, which shapes itself in words
To speak of him, and instantly dissolves."